Scrub a Dub Dub

SO scrubbing mold off your sliding wasn't the part of the 'dream of homeownership' I have longed for! haha BUT it had to be done, along with a few other cleaning and scrubbing tasks. 

We worked out butts off memorial day weekend! Seriously worked our butts off!!!!  They finished the patio the weekend before memorial day so we set our sights on getting the yard in shape over the 3 days weekend!

On the agenda:

-Scrub mold off sliding

-Wash front and back door

-Prep and paint the foundation

-Power wash (or at least hard hose) house to remove all the construction dirt

-Landscape around the patio- Even if we don't get all the plants, get some

-MULCH!!! The dirt around the patio was driving me crazy since it was getting everywhere and I was longing for mulch to keep the yard tidy.

-I also wanted to tend to the perennial border in front of the arborvitaes, even thought I am not sure that was on Colin's radar! ha!

I guys who did the patio had power washed some of the house, so the mold was much better but still not gone.  So saturday I put on my rubber gloves and my mask and got scrubbing!  Per my father's recommendation, I did half bleach (thank you to the old owners for leaving bleach under the sink!) and half water.  I felt like Nicole Curtis scrubbing way, that girl has patience! 

IT worked like a charm and half hour later, the house was mold free! yay!

Next step was dumping out my bleach solution and making a dish soap solution for washing the doors.  They were already dirty and got really dirty during patio construction.  I didn't scrub every nook and cranny, but the looks SO much better! I also bought some goop off/goop gone to get those stickers off the back door, but left the actual task of getting the stickers off the back door for another weekend!

Next up was the foundation.  Previous owners had painted it gray, but it was all chippy and peely.  I hadn't really noticed it until we got the new patio and then I did notice it and it looked BAD!  We didn't go crazy prepping it, but we did a decent job of ready-ing it for painting.  Colin borrowed a metal sander (aka an electric wire brush) to get the worst of it cleaned up, then we used a regular wire brush to clean it up a little more.  Colin got waterproof indoor/outdoor paint in 'basement gray' which is what we used to give everything a nice clean coat.  He did a good job of matching the exiting color, which worked out well, since we only painted half the foundation.  The front and one side we didn't tackle this time around, we just tackled the back and side you see from that patio and yard.  The house looks so much nicer and so much cleaner with a fresh coat of paints.

 

 

I'll leave the landscaping aspects of our list for another post.....(yay landscaping)